The 411 Douchebag of the Week: WWE

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the latest edition of The 411 Douchebag of the Week. I’m Bryan Kristopowitz.

So how many of you plan on seeing the new Halloween movie this coming Friday? I plan on seeing it, but I don’t know if I’m going to be able to see it on opening day (it all depends on how the week works itself out). The trailers and previews so far have been pretty good, and most of the advanced reviews I’ve seen for it have been positive, so that could be a good thing. Maybe. I’ve enjoyed most of the Halloween sequels so far, and they were all generally trashed by the critical establishment (Halloween H20 seemed to be the exception to that “rule”), so it’s not like the “real” critics are that important. But I do think it’s interesting that now, a slasher movie sequel is getting good reviews. How often does that happen?

I think it’s also interesting how this new Halloween seems to exist as both a sequel to the first movie and a kind of reboot of the franchise. It’s called Halloween for marketing purposes, obviously, but I’d imagine that the people at Blumhouse could, if they wanted to, make an argument that it’s a reboot of the first movie by saying that it’s essentially the same story all over again: masked killer and escaped loonbag Michael Myers is trying to kill a woman named Laurie. I suspect that that’s why, artistically,” the movie could plausibly be called Halloween and not Halloween II or Halloween: The Next Chapter.

I’m hoping that it’s good. For me, it doesn’t need to be excellent or fantastic or groundbreaking or amazing. It just needs to be good. I’ll be annoyed if, in the end, it’s just bad. The world doesn’t need any more bad slasher movies.

So, again, who plans on checking out the new Halloween this Friday?

And now onto this week’s Douchebag of the Week.

This week, the 411 Douchebag of the Week goes to the pro wrestling outfit World Wrestling Entertainment, or WWE for its half-assed, wishy washy response to the Jamal Khashoggi controversy. When it was revealed that Khashoggi, Washington Post writer and frequent critic of the Saudi Arabian government, was likely killed in the Saudi consulate in Turkey by Saudi connected agents, various people and businesses with ties and interests with the Saudi government began distancing themselves from the country and its government. Unfortunately, one of them was not the WWE, which is set to stage a major pay-per-view event called “Crown Jewel” in Saudi Arabia in November. The wrestling company, as of this writing, hasn’t announced that it is withdrawing the “Crown Jewel” event from its schedule. The only thing the company has said is “it’s monitoring the situation,” whatever the hell that means. The WWE has also now stopped saying where the “Crown Jewel” event is taking place, acting as though people are going to suddenly forget that it’s taking place in Saudi Arabia.

Now, when people and companies and whatnot started backing away from any affiliation with Saudi Arabia, I didn’t expect the WWE to follow them anyway. The pro wrestling company has a major, big money deal to stage events in Saudi Arabia, and the only way the company was going to stay away was a war, the announcement of some sort of official U.S. government sanctions preventing the company from going, or if the Saudi government itself cancelled the event. However, I did expect the WWE to at least be a little more forthcoming in why it wasn’t backing out of the event or have a better bullshit reason for staying. I can totally see Vince McMahon announcing his commitment to “international cultural understanding” or “bridging the divide between cultures.” It would essentially be nonsense, of course, but at least it would look like the WWE was engaged in coming up with a plausible yet ridiculous lie. Instead, the WWE seems to be content with simply covering up the fact that it’s in bed with a government that likely killed a journalist critical of it.

In the big scheme of things, I doubt anything beyond what we’ve already seen will happen to U.S./Saudi Arabia relations as a result of this potential murder. Human rights and protecting freedom of the press are all well and good, but there’s just too much money flowing between both countries to let something like deliberately killing a journalist to get in the way of anything. U.S. senators and congresspeople can call for sanctions and punishment and condemnation all they want, but they know, too, that money talks and is the most important thing in the world.

So what, exactly, is preventing the WWE from engaging in outright bullshit here and coming up with a better answer for its continued participation in the “Crown Jewel” event? Is the company afraid of being accused of not caring what happened to Kashoggi? How would that accusation be any different than what it’s being accused of now? Is the WWE afraid of a stock price drop? Why wouldn’t that happen now? Is the WWE terrified of being accused of not supporting the First Amendment? Is the WWE scared that a huge chunk of its audience will leave and stay away?

I just don’t get it. Why can’t the WWE come up with a good bullshit excuse for not cancelling the “Crown Jewel” event? What the hell is the company afraid of?

Disgraceful.

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And now for this week’s honorable mentions…

–Fox News, for complaining about Jamie Lee Curtis using guns in the new Halloween movie despite her advocacy for gun control reform. Because, yeah, that makes all the sense in the world, call an actor on the carpet for playing a character in a movie. And, as Curtis explains in the article at the link, Fox News never bothered to find out what she actually believed in/talked to her directly about her “hypocrisy.” Why let the truth get in the way of a nice bullshit story?

-Rapper, musician, and celebrity Kanye West, for whatever the fuck he was doing in the Oval Office last week. Is he having some sort of slow motion public breakdown or is this some sort of ongoing publicity stunt/performance art? And, no, I’m not talking about his support of President Trump, I’m talking about his incoherent rant in the Oval Office, the latest in a series of bizarre announcements that don’t seem to make much sense. Does he need help or some sort of award?

-Actor, civil rights icon, and pro football legend Jim Brown, for not stopping Kanye West from whatever the hell he was doing in the Oval Office. Yes, Brown is 82 years old and not in the best of shape, but he’s also still Jim fucking Brown and if he wants to kick someone’s ass who is going to stop him? He was sitting right next to West, he could have smacked him with his cane or something. And, yes, I get that Brown was there to meet with Trump on behalf of his own foundation Amer-I-Can, but come on, man. How can he not acknowledge how fucking weird that whole Kanye West thing was?

-Douchebag Hall of Famer Lena Dunham, for for saying that Daniel Tosh is the biggest misogynist in Hollywood because he said something unkind about her breasts. And, according to the insufferable “voice of a generation,” Tosh’s attack on her breasts was also an attack on all women with bodies Tosh doesn’t consider “normative.” Because that isn’t presumptuous or anything. Why isn’t it possible that Tosh just doesn’t like you and that’s it? And why do you care what he thinks to begin with if he’s so awful? And why the hell do you think you’re so important, in every and all contexts? Please, someone explain this to me.

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